Call for Concept Notes

ENHANCING MARKET PARTICIPATION AND LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUNG WOMEN (EMPLOY) PROJECT

NATIONAL CALL FOR CONCEPT NOTES

(AHAFO, EASTERN AND CENTRAL REGIONS)

ADVOCACY INNOVATION CHALLENGE GRANT

Assignment Location

Ghana

Duration of Contract

6 Months

Reports To

Project Director – with technical assistance from the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Advisor

Expected Start Date

April 13, 2026

BACKGROUND

ABOUT WUSC

World University Service of Canada (WUSC) is a leading Canadian international development organization that focuses on three programmatic areas: economic opportunities, Education, and Empowerment. Our vision is a world where every young person thrives and belongs. Our mission is to catalyse change by improving education and economic opportunities for young people. We support all young people, with a focus on women and people affected by displacement. Our organisational values are rooted in a commitment to collaboration and partnership, learning and adaptability, courageous leadership, youth voice and agency, and inclusion for all.

WUSC currently works in over 25 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America, with an annual budget of approximately CAD 50 million. Globally, we partner with a network of higher education institutions, civil society organisations, private sector partners, professionals, students, volunteers, faculty, and community leaders who help us achieve our mission.

ENHANCING MARKET PARTICIPATION AND LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUNG WOMEN (EMPLOY) PROJECT

The Enhancing Market Participation and Learning Opportunities for Young women (EMPLOY) project is an innovative five-year initiative. It aims to address the pressing issue of poverty in Ghana by creating sustainable pathways for young women to decent, dignified, high-paying work in sectors where they can thrive, advance, and lead.

Drawing upon the successes and key lessons from the INVEST project—including insights from an independent endline evaluation—EMPLOY is purposefully designed to deepen and broaden these impacts in the second phase. Specifically, EMPLOY will increase the sustainable impact returns on INVEST by:

• 
  Scaling Up: Reaching more young women by expanding into new regions, focusing on additional economic sectors (both traditional and non-traditional), and enhancing women's access to wage employment and entrepreneurship.
• 
  Diving Deeper: Promoting and facilitating sustained participation, advancement, and leadership opportunities for young women within high-paying job markets and entrepreneurial ventures.
• 
  Strengthening Partnerships: Leveraging innovative collaborations with key stakeholders across local TVET and employment systems, promoting local ownership, innovation, institutional capacity, scalability, and long-term sustainability.

EMPLOY will emphasize skill-training enhancements for young women in the previously non-traditional sectors targeted by the INVEST project. It will expand into additional sectors with high income and advancement potential, such as the growing tourism and hospitality industry. An Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) pilot program will also be explored to address childcare-related barriers impeding women's labor market participation. Over 20,000 young women are expected to benefit from gender-transformative changes in the training and employment ecosystem.

RATIONALE

Violence against women and girls has been found to limit women’s access to education, employment and participation in public life, therefore holding back the realization of their full potential and economic growth. Globally, it has been estimated that at least one in three women will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, with new phenomenons like digital and technology-facilitated abuse also on the rise, affecting 16-58% of women.

In Ghana, the EMPLOY Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) analysis study conducted in July 2025 identified that workplace environments in high-growth employment sectors were replete with gender-based violence (GBV), particularly sexual harassment. Female trainees, especially those in informal apprenticeships, are frequently exposed to harassment and unsafe conditions due to the absence of clear protection protocols. Introducing safeguarding mechanisms, such as anonymous reporting channels, referral pathways, and trained focal persons, is therefore essential to creating safe, respectful, and equitable learning spaces.

The research also detected stereotypical gender attitudes related to male toughness and female subordination and found that many young men in the workplace are not aware that their behaviour can sometimes be offensive or sexually harassing and contribute to work environments unconducive to the integration of women into the workforce.

The EMPLOY project through the Innovation Advocacy Grant program therefore seeks to partner with women-led and youth-led organisations to embark on awareness campaigns and innovative initiatives to sensitize and educate community members, industries, employers and institutions in challenging inequitable gender norms and creating safe, enabling and conducive environments to support women's participation in high-growth trade sectors.

ADVOCACY INNOVATION CHALLENGE GRANT

WUSC wishes to announce the annual call for concept papers for the 'Advocacy Innovation Challenge Grant'. The Advocacy Challenge Grant is an annual grant designed to incentivize advocacy campaigns that aim to influence public perceptions and challenge social norms that constrain women's access to employment opportunities in non-traditional trades. The grant will strengthen the capacity of partner organisations to develop, test, and scale innovative gender-responsive and inclusive advocacy initiatives to address harmful gendered cultural and social norms that hinder and limit women's equitable access to active participation in non-traditional trades in seven regions of Ghana, namely, Greater Accra, Eastern, Central, Sekondi-Takoradi, Ashanti, Bono, and Ahafo.

The initiatives will target young women, women-led organisations, influencers, local authorities, Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions and trainers, media, and government agencies. These initiatives are expected to contribute to advancing the project outcome 1310, which aims to improve public and industry attitudes and perceptions towards women's economic participation in non-traditional trades. There are other complementary outputs and accompanying partners for the realisation of the set objectives of the EMPLOY project. Therefore, guidance will be provided to successful organisations on designing their campaigns to promote concreteness in implementation and achieve tangible outcomes.

The Advocacy Innovation Challenge Grant (AICG) initiative is open to Local Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), Youth-Organizations, and Women’s Rights Organizations (WROs) with experience in transformative approaches in Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) programming, women's economic empowerment, women's and youth leadership, and advocacy. Recipients of the grant will receive capacity-strengthening and technical support to design, plan, and implement their advocacy initiatives. The grant is open to gender-responsive, inclusive, and innovative campaigns around the key thematic areas indicated below:

SEXUAL AND GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE (SGBV)

1. 
   Initiatives and campaigns to address and respond tosexual and gender-based violence in institutions, communities, and workplaces.
2. 
   Advocacy and campaigns promoting enabling and inclusive safe schooland workplace environments, particularly in high-growth non-traditional trade sectors, to encourage women's active and equitable participation.

ANTICIPATED RESULTS FOR THE ADVOCACY INNOVATION CHALLENGE GRANT (AICG)

The goal of the Advocacy Innovation Challenge Grant is to advance the EMPLOY project objectives of influencing harmful public perceptions and attitudes towards women's participation in non-traditional and high-growth trades through community mobilization and outreach campaigns targeting young women, key influencers, and change agents.

The objectives are as follows:

1. 
   To influence harmfulpublic perceptions and attitudes on women's participation in non-traditional and high-growth trades.
2. 
   To promote equitable, accessible,and enabling environments for women's economic empowerment in training institutions, workplaces, and communities.
3. 
   To strengthen the capacity of youth-led and women-led organizations to engage the public and advocate for increased participation and inclusion of young women who face multiple levels of exclusionin high-growth and non-traditional trades
4. 
   To strengthen the capacity of recipient organisationsto scale up their advocacy and public engagement initiatives on gender-transformative, inclusive, and innovative approaches to women's
5. 
   To mobilize a diverse and inclusive community of advocates for women'sempowerment in the non-traditional and high-growth trades through advocacy and public engagement initiatives.
6. 
   To complement the project'sgender-transformative and inclusive media and communication efforts. Outreach will target family, community leaders, and industry stakeholders, delivering messages that promote and support young women's empowerment in non-traditional and high-growth trades.

ELIGIBLE ORGANISATION

To be eligible to apply for the Advocacy Innovation Challenge Grant:

1. 
   Organisations must be a registered entity with a minimum of 3+ years of operational experience in the country
2. 
   The applicant should be a local CSO/NGO, women'srights organization, or youth organization with a track record in promoting gender equality, inclusion, women's labour rights, youth rights, advocacy, and/or inclusive, gender-responsive community outreach approaches.
3. 
   The applicant must have experience working in communities, such as those adjacent to the communities where the campaigns will take place.
4. 
   The prospective recipient agrees to provide data and information on their operations to meet the project'sMonitoring and Evaluation obligations.
5. 
   The applicant should oblige WUSC to conduct a Pre-Audit, Monitoring, and Evaluation Capacity Assessment.

GRANT SIZE AND SELECTION PROCESS

The total amount to be disbursed under the Advocacy Innovation Challenge Grant is approximately One Hundred Thousand Ghana Cedis (100,000) per successful proposal.

Interested organizations are first required to submit a concept note using the template in Annex A. A diverse and inclusive selection committee will then review the submitted concept notes and select successful applications using a defined set of criteria (Annex B) to determine eligibility. The successful applicants will then receive technical assistance to refine their concept notes into a full proposal to facilitate the grant contracting process.

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